Thanks to Starbucks free-iphone-store-thingy-of-the-week program, we now have Halftone installed on my iPad 2. The little guy has been having all sorts of fun with it. Halftone is an IOS app that converts a photo (either from your photo album or one you take on the fly) into a panel from a comic book. There are a variety of title, caption, word bubble options. I'm sure those aren't the correct terms for those versed in the art of graphic novels.

PP loves it, he spent at least a couple hours yesterday making panels of everything from himself, to his new nerf guns, to "red guy" (seen below). He's been having fun with the image effects, and it's been an educational process for the both of us. For me, I learned that applying a black and white filter, means that the panel is now about a "spooky mystery movie," apparently his idea of film noir. For him, he's learning the hidden language of the comics, such as what bubble represents speaking, shouting, thinking or dreaming.

There's just one problem. The image handling is right up his alley, but filling the bubbles, titles and captions is problematic for someone who can't read and write. Dragon to the rescue. I showed him how to go to the Dragon app, dictate his dialog, then copy and paste it back into Halftone. It's an excellent solution, and it saves me from having to constantly take dictation. Now I'm free to get back to sorting the top of one of Mom's closets. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature of my plan, but Dragon is going to need some training for a 5 year old voice that doesn't quite get that he needn't emote quite so much when he's dictating what will ultimately be a shout. I think this was supposed to be "I LOVE humans!!"